Hmm… I’m going to do 2 episodes at once since 3.09 wasn’t a lot.
3.09 – Twenty-Sided, Die
Oh don’t get me wrong, on the whole I loved this episode. Heck can I just watch an hour of the iZombie cast playing D&D? This episode did feel a lot shorter probably both because it was so much fun and because the case was never “solved” properly, leaving one feeling like there’s still 15 minutes to go in the episode even as credits roll.
Still one thing I enjoy with the show is the effort it puts in to make it all feel like a real, living world. Ravi makes a juice that enhances zombie visions? With most shows that would be forgotten, and even though they are not doing the military intel idea I had (yet), they ARE using that blue goo to make a new zombie drug. Which is clever, I approve.
I like also that this season they’re doing a b-cast outside of the zombie world. Not that I didn’t enjoy some of the characters we got to see, but it’s great to see familiar faces. Like Vampire Steve who reminds me of Richmond from The IT Crowd (and it’s always good to remind me of the IT Crowd. If they can get Noel Fielding to come in and play Steve’s father? I will reach nerdvana). Anyway, it would sometimes create a bit of mood whiplash where we would watch Liv take on these wacky personalities, but most of the people we watched seemed quite normal. In other words, where’s all the wacky people in Seattle before they die? Are they in ghettos? Well finally having some “wacky” police station, doing mundane jobs, makes the world sync better. I’m starting to appreciate seeing Jimmy Hahn and Vampire Steve. They don’t have to show up every episode, but with some regularity is appreciated. Also, the joke about Jimmy’s sketch of Liv was very well done. You didn’t HAVE to see prior episodes to laugh at that moment, but if you did, you laughed harder. That’s how you do continuity, writers.
Poor Don E. Just… don’t do drugs, kids. Even blue-juiced up brains. Objectively speaking… this episode was about an A-, but for me personally, the D&D jokes pushed it to A+… for no particular reason.
Also I didn’t see a connection this time between the cooking and the victim this episode. Did you?
3.10 – Return of the Dead Guy
Hey Mr. Boss is back! Though by now he’s tried to kill Blaine 3 times and Blaine is STILL keeping him around. By some point, he’s going to try a head shot and really I thought Blaine was smarter than that.
It was interesting that for this episode we never actually saw Liv’s visions from her perspective. Good on the show with innovating.
Also good on the show for giving a bit more time with Liv dealing with Drake’s death. I ended up liking him as a character far more than I thought I would and regret we didn’t get more with him. Still it seems awfully soon for her and Major both to be with other people, like the season has a formula with them having a doomed lover that will die to clear the way for Liv & Major. Previously it felt organic and worked but this season it has felt forced.
All told this was a very plot-thick episode with things being shifted around for the next part of the season with some fan service added in to keep you interested. Still the show usually has more… flair when it does shuffling and fan service. This was the first time I can recall the “machinery” of the writing and show making were visible.
Of course what did I say way back when I wrote my season 1 review of the show?
A zombie apocalypse as portrayed in most media couldn’t really happen but in this show we have a believable set up. Here, zombism is a manageable condition that could spread quietly for a long time until a supply chain problem causes it to break out of bounds.
Needless to say I’m pleased that this episode, we get a demonstration of it where the audience is introduced to two characters, only to have it be revealed later that they are, in fact, zombies. The obvious implication would seem to be that maybe Fillmore Graves had the perpetrator killed to aid the campaign of the zombie mayor. Was that guy also pressured by FMG to get the memory card in the first place by them zombifying his daughter? They might have even staged the sniper attack as a false flag to let the rednecks take the blame and boost the zombie candidate’s poll numbers. Smart money says FMG is behind it all but the show has a way of surprising us. Consider me interested, iZombie.
Setting aside the fanservice, I give the episode… a B-. Normally an episode so critical to the season’s arc would be ranked higher but this one was just a little too clunky. Still, points for their efforts to innovate and keep pushing the show in new directions.
